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Steyer joins gun groups in push to register high school students to vote

Democratic mega-donor and billionaire Tom Steyer said he will donate $1 million to fund a high school voter registration push with two gun control advocacy groups.

Steyer told Politico that his organization, NextGen America, will join Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords, the group founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and her husband Mark Kelly, in a voter registration effort following a mass shooting at a Florida high school last week.

Giffords, who was nearly killed when she was shot during a “meet and greet” event in Arizona in 2011, founded her group following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. Everytown was founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I).

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“In the wake of this shooting in Parkland, what we saw was [that] the difference between this shooting and other shootings is these were older kids, and they had a voice that was incredibly powerful on a topic where elected officials had been paid for years — or decades — to look the other way,” Steyer told Politico, referring to the Florida shooting.

The registration push will focus on Republican lawmakers who have accepted donations from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and have voted against new gun restrictions, Politico reported.

The effort will start on March 25, the day after a march on gun control organized by the Florida shooting survivors is set to take place in Washington, D.C.

“We’ve always said the millennials are the biggest and least politically represented group in the U.S. This is exactly why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Steyer told Politico.

Steyer, a top Democratic donor, announced earlier this year that he will not run for office in 2018. However, he is planning on spending at least $30 million through NextGen America to flip House seats currently held by Republicans.